Tuesday, April 20

Problem

Cafiend started the ephiphany. He mentioned a "Travel Agent." It just so happens I have a "Travel Agent," complete with a barrel adjuster. I didn't buy it for Buddy's V Brake, but instead so I could use a bar end shifter to shift my internal gear hub on Frankenbike.

It began a process that revealed that I have gradually been accumulating a LOT of small bike stuff. Lights, fenders, mittens and gloves, and other accumulations that totally obscure the air hockey table surface from view. As a matter of fact, there is just about everything bikish on the table EXCEPT for that durn "Travel Agent."

As in alcoholics, the first step is to admit one has a problem. So, where IS that Travel Agent? Yup, I've got a problem. AT LEAST I found that other set of antirotation washers and my unused iTunes gift card.

AHA, it was quietly hiding away in the bike stuff annex. As proof, see below. For those of you that have no idea what a Travel Agent does, it doubles the cable pull you can get with a set of bar end shifters so that the cable pull matches what the internal gear hub is expecting. Alternately, it doubles the cable pull from a set of really lovely OEM SRAM Rival Carbon Brifters so that you can set the brakes to a position in between "never on" and "always on." As Cafiend hints, but is too much of a gentleman to outright say, one wonders what in the heck Specialized was thinking about when they sold the Tricross with underengineered brakes. They even sold it on the SWorks version of the Tricross. $5k for a racing bike without practical brakes. Maybe they figured people wouldn't NEED brakes on the Tricross since the mud pit will slow us down. Whew! So now I've got A Travel Agent, but I might need as many as three...

Travel Agent by QBP. The cable wraps around the little pulley and then doubles its travel by going around the big one.
Yup, its even got a barrel adjuster!
BTW, my LBS didn't know what a Travel Agent was either, but they ordered one up for me!

No comments:

Post a Comment

No Need for Non-Robot proof here!